Wicked t-shirt Wednesday!

Well, at least that’s what I’m calling June 5 from now on, because on this date in 1978, Japanese video arcade game maker Taito Corporation released the now iconic shooter game to the world. Thus the golden age of video arcade gaming was born.

Designer Tomohiro Nishikado drew his inspiration from popular media, including: “Breakout,” “The War of the Worlds,” and “Star Wars,” in creating Space Invaders, one of the most popular forerunners of modern video gaming.

Fun factoids: According to Wikipedia, originally Nishikado wanted to use airplanes as enemies for Space Invaders, but would have encountered problems making them move smoothly due to the limited computing power at the time (the game was based on Intel’s 8 bit 8080 microprocessor). Humans would have been easier to render, but management at Taito forbade the use of human targets. In addition to designing and programming the game, Nishikado also created the artwork and sounds, and engineered the game’s arcade hardware, putting together a microcomputer from scratch.

I am a Tampa Bay Pop Culture Reviewer for Examiner.com, and a contributing writer at SciFi4Me.com, where you will find a vast array of sci-fi news and reviews, interviews and cool links to other science fiction sites.